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| The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President | 
 enlarge | Authors: Vincent Bugliosi, Gerry Spence
Creator: Molly Ivins
Publisher: Nation Books
Category: Book
List Price: $9.95
Buy New: $0.01
You Save: $9.94 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (217 reviews)
Sales Rank: 335877
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.5
ISBN: 156025355X
Dewey Decimal Number: 324.973
EAN: 9781560253556
ASIN: 156025355X
Publication Date: May 3, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
During the course of American history, wrongful events have occurred and certain Americans have stood up and spoken out against these wrongs: Tom Paine, Edward R. Murrow, Daniel Ellsberg. Vincent Bugliosi takes his place in this special pantheon of patriots with his powerful, brilliant, and courageous expose of crime by the highest court in the land. When an article he wrote on this topic appeared in The Nation magazine in February 2001, it drew the largest outpouring of letters and e-mail in the magazine's 136-year history, tapping a deep reservoir of outrage. The original article is now expanded, amended, and backed by amplifications, endnotes, and the relevant Supreme Court documents.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 212 more reviews...
 A cause for civil disobedience November 22, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
What happened in 2000 was, in my humble opinion, a cause for civil disobedience on a national scale. Riots, demonstrations, surrounding buildings and keeping the occupants inside until they came to their senses, even more. Had we the bravery that, say, Lithuanians had in 1990, or that lone figure in Tienanmen Square showed so long ago, we might have spared ourselves the ignominy and disgrace of this petulant, recalcitrant, intellectually underemployed, ignorant, bigoted, mendacious, simple-minded moron (who, I might add, half the country identified with - says something). Don't know if we're either capable or willing to recover from the past 7 years of utter cynical evil. Perhaps now would be a good time for an extraterrestrial takeover. (I'm kidding, folks. About the ET, that is, not about the person referenced above.) Maybe we can convince the ETs to take the 5 "conservative" "justices" with them? Especially Scalia and Thomas? The ETs can put them in some kind of display case and label them "mentally underdeveloped semi-humans" or something like that? I can't help thinking that whenever someone identifies themselves as a republican that I feel there's a severe personal deficiency about them, like retardation, or autism.
 Educational August 29, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book packs a lot of information into very few pages. Bugliosi does a good job of supporting his suppositions with law. There are so many points made, most everyone will be unaware of some of them. The biggest drawback for me was that sometimes Bugliosi strays into name-calling which leads one to begin to doubt if some of the scholarship isn't slanted more than is obvious at first blush.
A case Excellently Presented August 5, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Bugliosi is one of a kind! He makes his points clearly and effectively. I wish he could take all these so called "justices" to court where he would run circles around them with his startlingly clear reasoning and thinking, ending with them all being dragged off to the nearest prison for treason. A great book to get the juices of freedom flowing again from a great man who truly cares about justice.
 Right Result, Wrong Reasoning May 31, 2007
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
I voted for Al Gore in 2000 and wish that he were finishing his second term as President at this time. However, if you put partisan emotions aside and look at the full legal context of that election, it is clear that Bush was the legally elected President.
Article II of the Constitution gives state legislatures the authority to appoint electors to the electoral college, using whatever criteria each legislature establishes. In the early days of the Republic, most legislatures chose all electors themselves, by majority vote. Over time, other criteria were used, until now all 50 states award electors based on the results of the popular vote. With only one or two exceptions (I forget which states), the candidate with the highest popular vote in a given state gets ALL of that state's electoral votes.
For many decades, Florida has followed this procedure to award its electoral votes. But Florida election laws clearly state that the state legislature has the right to set aside the results of the popular vote totals; the legislature may then directly award, by majority vote of all legislators, the electoral votes to whichever candidate it chooses. In 2000, both Houses of the Florida legislature had solid Republican majorities. The Republican leaders of both bodies (and the Republican governor, Jeb Bush), clearly stated that, if necessary, they would call a special legislative session to award ALL Florida electors to George W. Bush.
Had that scenario occurred, here is what would likely have played out. On the day that Congress was scheduled to count the electoral votes, the Gore operatives would have challenged the Florida electoral count. Existing FEDERAL election laws would then have become operative. The Republican U.S. House majority would have awarded the electoral votes to Bush. The U.S. Senate would have voted 51-50 to award the electoral votes to Gore, with then Vice President Gore casting the tiebreaking vote in his favor. Federal law states that if the Senate and House award electors to different candidates, the governor of the state in question has the right to break the tie and award the electors to the candidate he so chooses. The Florida governor in 2000...Jeb Bush, George W.'s brother. In a last ditch effort to salvage the election for Gore, the Florida Supreme Court would probably have tried to use their powers of judicial review to thwart this scenario, by claiming that a state Supreme Court has authority to review all acts of its own legislature. However, the U.S. Supreme Court would certainly have ruled that the U.S. Constitution unequivocally gives the power to select electors (by whichever method it chooses) to state legislatures, outside the scope of state court judicial review - and by more than a 5-4 vote.
So there you have it, folks. Lament all you want over what federal election laws should be, bash the electoral college, lambaste the confusing "butterfly" ballots in south Florida, criticize the flimsy equal protection arguments of the 5 or 7 justices, etc. But all partisan feelings aside, George W. Bush was the legitimately, constitutionally elected winner of the 2000 Presidential election. All other legal reasonings in this book make for nice academic discussions, but are beside the point in any practical sense.
Doesn't mince any words May 29, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Bugliosi turns a prosecutor's eye to Bush v. Gore and finds the decision not just lacking substance, but a criminal act.
First he deals with motive. All of the 5 justices who chose Bush as president came up through partisan Republican politics. While that's expected (since they come to their positions through the political process), integrity in upholding their oath to support the Consitition has been expected to take precedence. Beyond their partisan pasts and connections, 3 of the 5 had immediate and direct interest in a Bush presidency. Justice O'Connor publically said that if Gore won she'd have to postpone her retirement at least 4 years (so as not to have a Democratic President apppoint her successor.) Justice Thomas's wife, through her Heritage Foundation position was poised to serve on the Bush transition team and Justice Scalia's two sons work for a law firm that handles Bush's legal business.
Bugliosi doesn't say what would happen if we, the non-elite, helped out friends or worked things to our interest through service on a jury, but I'm sure something would.
Next Bugliosi deals with the legal issues. How could the court accept Bush's argument that Bush needed "equal protection" from Gore? That is... the court assumed that Bush won the election and that by counting the votes Gore could take it away from him. Votes, 60,000 in this case, the sacred element of our democracy... the very core of what people fight and die for... were negated as the Court ignored its own entrenched states right biases and regarded time frames as inflexible when complete past practice and case law showed recounts and seating delegates, (with disputes always decided by states and state courts), to be viewed as target dates and not rigid dealines.
On p. 155 Bugliosi has a hypothetical script. He suggests the dialog of the justices and how they came to "reason out" their unsigned opinion that allowed them to pick the president over 50 million voting Americans.
In the early part of the book (written in 2001) he likens this decision to the "preposterous" idea that Republican prosecutors would prosecute only Democrats and vice versa. It was strange that he would mention it, because it was this exact thing that piqued my current interest in this 2001 book.
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